


The Fallen

by chakimcai



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:24:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6689026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chakimcai/pseuds/chakimcai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter isn't finished</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cato lay on the ground in excruciating pain, surrounded by a pack of wolf-like muttations. Katniss and Peeta looked down at him from the ledge, safely out of the reach of the snarling, hungry animals. He had lost a lot of blood and barely had enough strength to beg Katniss to shoot him. She took aim and the arrow went straight into his heart. With his last breath he weakly echoed her last words from her scoring session: “Thank you for your consideration. ” Then he closed his eyes.

 _This is it,_ he thought. _No more me. I have ceased to exist._

He waited. _Any minute now I should be gone,_ he thought. _But I’m still here – and I feel great!_

He opened his eyes and looked around. _I’m still in the arena. Something’s – different about it. I can’t put my finger on it._ “Katniss! Peeta! Are you there?” he called out. No answer. _Did they die? Did I win? The Gamemakers will be here to take me home soon. I get to keep my promise to Ilsa.._

He jumped up and ran around and turned cartwheels until he collapsed on the grass in the same spot where he lay before. _Strange there’s no blood here,_ he thought, _seeing how just a little while ago those demon wolves were ripping me apart. Maybe I was just having a bad dream._

Suddenly he heard a boy’s voice call out, “Cato! I never expected to see you here.”

Cato looked up and recognized the boy from District 3, Isaac. “I’ll just bet you didn’t. Time to finish what I apparently failed to do before.” With that, he grabbed the boy, threw him to the ground and began to violently pummel his stomach.

“Hey!” Isaac almost laughed. “Will you stop that? You - you’re getting on my nerves! ”

Cato released his victim, only because he thought that was an odd choice of words from someone who was getting the daylights beaten out of him. _Like I’m not even hurting him._ “Look,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t know how you survived me snapping your neck the other day, but it’s not going to happen again, even if I have to break every bone in your body. ”

Isaac looked him straight in the eye. “You can’t.”

“What?” _That little nerd did not just say that._ Cato’s eyes burned with hatred for the boy whose brilliant idea to help the Careers had backfired and gotten their entire food supply blown up.

“You can’t break my bones. Physical injury doesn’t exist here.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Cato growled through clenched teeth, ready to strangle his victim once more. “So what, you’re just going to stand there? I’m giving you a chance to run away. ”

Isaac sighed. “Let me try to explain this to you again. There’s nothing to run away from. You can’t hurt me. You already killed me. It’s over. I’m dead. So are you.”

Cato looked down. “I don’t believe you.”

“I know you don’t. All of us went through the same thing when we first got here.” Isaac turned and walked up to the Cornucopia. Cato followed him. What else was there to do?

“This is where we go in.” Isaac showed Cato an inscription which read:

Eta Delta House  
Established by the fallen Tributes  
of the 74th Hunger Games

“‘In?’” Cato echoed, giving Isaac a funny look. ”It’s just a rock.”

“It was just a rock,” Isaac corrected him. He took a small square of granite out of his pocket and pressed it on the inscription. “Now watch.”

A few seconds later a door appeared in the Cornucopia and slid open. The two boys went in. Cato, still not quite able to process what was happening, warily followed Isaac down a long hall. Soon he began to hear the voices of other boys and girls.


	2. Chapter 2

“Ugh.” Clove rolled her eyes, having overheard Rue telling Thresh about conversations she’d had with Katniss. “If I have to hear that girl’s name one more time I swear I’m gonna lose my mind. ”

“We’re dead,” Glimmer yawned, brushing her hair out of her face. “I’m pretty sure we don’t have minds.”

“Speak for yourself, blondie doll,” Clove snapped at her former ally, who was stretched out lazily on the couch, wearing the frilly pink dress she had worn for her interview with Caesar Flickerman, and letting the District 8 girl, Poplin, paint butterflies on her toenails. _Spoiled, useless District 1 airhead,_ she thought. _She would have died sooner if she didn’t have me helping her._

She went over to where Thresh and Rue were talking, just as Cato and Isaac were coming in.

“Rue, naive baby girl,” she said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Did you really think Fire Girl was such a great friend? She was probably relieved to see you killed before it came down to you and her. Not that there was any chance of that happening,” she couldn’t resist adding.

“Clove,” Cato interrupted, wanting her to stop giving the little girl a hard time, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Don’t cry, little one.” Clove patted Rue patronizingly on the head. Cato shot her a dirty look, which she ignored. “No matter how much she may have liked you, at the end of the day her life depended on your death just as much as it did on mine. That’s the horrible truth. Katniss wasn’t your friend, she was your enemy. I’m sorry she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. ”

“That’s not true. She was my friend. Still is,” Rue sniffled. 

Clove was an expert at knife-throwing, and had initially been dismayed to open her eyes and find that her knives no longer worked; however, her tongue was still sharp, and if that was the only weapon she could have, she meant to make the most of it. Her words were made more hurtful by the fact that none of the kids, for the time being, were permitted to see the living residents of Panem.

“Where is your friend now? That’s right. She got to go home with Lover Boy. And those two are having a fabulous time celebrating their victory, which is really the same as celebrating our lives having been tragically and cruelly cut short. It’s sickening. And in the middle of all that fun, I’ll bet anything she never once thought about you.”

“Clove,” Cato broke in again, seeing the pain in Rue's eyes, “how would you like to be reincarnated as an Avox?” As soon as he said it, he knew it sounded ridiculous. But it didn’t matter, because Rue’s face lit right up.

“Ooh, Cato, you are simply _adorable_ when you make empty threats,” Clove purred, pressing against him and kissing his neck. “Tell me more. ”

“I said, SHUT UP, CLOVE!” Cato shouted, pushing her off him. She lost her balance and fell backward on top of the District 8 girl, who in turn spilled purple nail polish all over Glimmer’s dress. Rue laughed at the scuffle that ensued between the three girls. She was also puzzled as to why Cato of all people decided to take up for her. He saw her unspoken question and answered with a look of love he had never before let anyone see, save one other person.

“I never could stand for anyone to pick on my sister.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Cato, do you have to do this? ”

Ten year old Ilsa tugged hard at her big brother’s arm as he was applying gel to his blond hair and trying to spike it just right. “Son of a - ” he cried out. “Ilsa, you made me get that stuff in my eye. Can you please just - go sit over there? ” Instantly he felt bad for snapping at her. He bent down and playfully smeared a little gel on her nose. She laughed, then burst into tears and threw her arms around him.

“Don’t, Ilsa,” Cato said, gently but firmly. “I haven’t died yet - and I’m not going to. You promised me you wouldn’t cry.”

“I - I know.” Ilsa wiped her eyes and tried to look as brave as she could.

“That’s my girl.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now you better keep yourself together while I’m out there, ’cause if Mom and Dad catch you crying they’ll make you train an extra hour every day. You know how they are. ”

Ilsa knew. Their mother and father had volunteered in the 49th and 46th Hunger Games, respectively, and expected Cato and Ilsa also to volunteer and win. Ilsa had just begun her training a few months ago, and hated it. She missed being able to go off in the woods with her sketch pad, a gift from Cato, and paint with the juices of different colored berries that she found.

“I tried to tell them this isn’t your thing and I showed them your paintings,” Cato went on. “You have a lot of talent. I thought if they could see that, they’d want to get you some real paints and maybe even cut the training back a little. Mom said she liked what you did and I thought I had them until Dad said, ‘Beautiful pictures won’t keep her alive in the arena.’” 

“Well, that is true,” Ilsa said thoughtfully. “In two years my name gets entered into the Reaping for the first time. Suppose I’m picked and no one volunteers to go in my place?”

“Cato! Ilsa!” their father called to them from downstairs. ”Your mother is waiting in the car. We don't want to be late.”

”Coming, Dad!” they called back together. They hugged again. Cato said to Ilsa, “Don’t worry about what’s going to happen in two years. When I win, you and I are going to live in the Capitol. Then you can do anything you want. ”


	4. Chapter 4

Rue stopped laughing and looked at Cato with some disappointment. “You weren’t thinking of that when we were alive. Why now?” Of course she knew the answer already. He’d had to constantly project a hard-as-nails image, especially for the television cameras. Now that she thought about it, when Caesar Flickerman was interviewing him, he never even mentioned having a sister. Undoubtedly he had been advised against it by his mentors and stylists.

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who killed you,” Cato said defensively. “I wasn’t even there when it happened. Don’t - ”

“Don’t what, Cato? Judge you?” Rue stood up as tall as she could, looking serious. “Would you have killed me if you saw me? Tell the truth.”

“Yeah, probably, but...” His voice broke and his steely blue eyes filled with tears. “I can’t. Marvel, you tell her. What was going through your mind when you threw your spear at her?” He sank into the couch and buried his face in his hands.

Now it was Marvel’s turn to be defensive. He jerked Cato up off the couch. “Don’t put this on me, you big crybaby. I never meant to kill the little girl. That spear was for Katniss. My aim was just off, that's all. You're the one who said you would have killed her if you saw her...” 

The two boys began to argue and Rue went outside for some peace and quiet. It seemed all these kids did was argue about who did what and who should have done what. In a way it was like being at home with her brothers and sisters, only now she had four times as many, and all of them were older than her instead of younger. She wasn’t accustomed to being the baby of the group, or she might have played that up to her advantage; now that no one was trying to kill her she wasn’t sure she liked this arrangement.

She knew Marvel wasn’t being honest. _At least Cato tried._ She understood how the Games worked, and how the Capitol worked, and that each of the tributes, the Careers in particular, had reasons to kill as many of the others as possible. It wasn’t just for the prize. President Snow had a way of cooking up cruel punishments for the families of victors who “cheated,” the definition of which was not clearly laid out and often depended on Snow’s opinion of the victor, or the district he or she came from.

Her thoughts drifted to the awful things Clove said about Katniss. _Was she right? Could Katniss really have turned on me so easily? Worse than that, could I have turned on her?_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't finished

Rue walked slowly to the place where she died, still mulling over Clove’s hateful remarks, until she saw that the flowers Katniss had placed on her lifeless body still lay there on the ground. A gentle breeze blew across the flowers. “Rue,” it seemed to say in loving, musical, feminine tones.

She sat down and listened. “I’m here, Rue, listen to me.” The lady’s voice was otherworldly, yet strangely familiar. 

“I - ” Rue began, then hesitated, trying to remember how she knew this lady. She had to be very special, or she couldn't have gotten into this place which was for this year’s fallen Tributes, and off limits to those who had died elsewhere.


End file.
